5/16/2024–|Last updated: 5/16/202411:39 PM (Mecca time)
In a move that observers described as resounding, a high-ranking Jewish employee in the administration of US President Joe Biden announced her resignation from her position yesterday, Wednesday, due to what she described as his disastrous and ongoing support for the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
In an article published by the Washington Post, Lily Greenberg Cole, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff at the Interior Ministry, cited her Jewish upbringing and relationship with Israel and recounted how her family fled from Europe to America to escape anti-Semitic persecution there.
In her resignation letter, Greenberg-Cole – who made the first public resignation by a Jew over Biden’s support for Israel – wrote, “I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amid President Biden’s disastrous and continuing support for the genocide in Gaza.”
In an interview she conducted with writer Yasmine Abu Talib, Greenberg Cole said that resigning was a difficult decision because of the society in which she grew up, but the Jewish values in which she was raised led her to make this decision.
‘Shame on our ancestors’
“Judaism is the most important part of my identity, and all the values I was raised with and all my Jewish education are what led me to this decision,” Greenberg-Cole said. She added, “What Israel is doing in Gaza and to the Palestinians throughout the land does not represent the Jews and is a shame to our ancestors.”
Commenting on her position in the Biden administration, she said, “Everyone here is thinking about achieving the American dream and rising to the top, but I asked myself several times during the past eight months: What is the benefit of power if it is not used to stop crimes against humanity?”
Earlier this week, a US Army major working for the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned, writing in an open letter that he felt “incredibly ashamed and guilty” when he realized that his work contributed to the suffering and killing of Palestinians.
A political official also resigned from the Ministry of Education last January, and an employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who worked on transporting weapons to foreign countries last October.
